Known ratchet wrenches may comprise a wrench head that houses a driven member. The driven member may be provided with an aperture shaped to receive an item that is to be driven. For example, the aperture may be a hexagonal aperture sized to receive a particular size of fastener head/nut. Alternatively, the driven member may comprise a spigot that projects from the wrench head to allow the wrench head to be connected to a drive socket or the like. A resilient annular clutch may be disposed between the wrench head and driven member to transmit an applied torque from the wrench head to the driven member. When the wrench handle is turned in the drive direction to apply a torque to a fastener of the like, the clutch is deformed to lock the wrench head to the driven member to transmit the torque. When the wrench handle is turned in the opposite direction, the clutch springs back to allow relative movement of the wrench head and driven member to all repositioning of the wrench handle.
In order to avoid having an overly large wrench head, the resilient annular clutch may be a relatively thin sprung ring, which when subjected to repeated high torques is deformed to such an extent it becomes ineffective.
The annular clutch may have a series of fine teeth on its outer side to engage correspondingly fine teeth on the wrench head. There may for example be at least one hundred teeth on the annular clutch. Since such teeth are relatively fine, even a small amount of deformation of the annular clutch, for example as little as 0.01% makes it particularly likely to fail properly engage the teeth on the wrench head. Manufacturing a relatively thin annular clutch with fine teeth is not straightforward. One potential manufacturing method is metal injection moulding MIM. MIM parts are moulded from metal particles held together with a percentage of plasticiser or wax. The moulded parts are subjected to a very high temperature in a vacuum oven during which the metal particles fuse and the plasticiser is burnt and vacuumed off. Even differences as small as 0.02% in the process produces variations in the finished size that may cause misalignment of the teeth when the annular clutch ring is forced into engagement with the wrench head.
A further problem with such ratchet wrenches is that the ingress of fine dust or grit quickly fouls the ratchet mechanism.
It is an object of the invention to at least partially alleviate one or more of the above-mentioned problems, or to provide an alternative to existing products. Embodiments of the invention may provide a more cost effective and reliable product.